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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

The Devils have signed defenseman Andy Greene to a five-year, $25 million contract extension, team president and general manager Lou Lamoriello announced during a media conference call this afternoon.

Greene's salary (and salary cap hit) for each season of the extension will be $5 million. The deal, which includes a no-trade clause, runs through the completion of the 2019-20 season.

Greene, who will turn 32 on Oct. 30, is entering the final season of a four-year contract that pays $3.5 million in 2014-15 ($3 million salary cap hit). He would have been eligible to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1, 2015.

“Everyone knows what Andy’s value is to our organization and we’re just delighted to get it done at this point,” Lamoriello said.

Greene emerged as the Devils’ top defenseman the past two seasons. In 2013-14, he led the team in averaging 24:34 in ice time per game. Defenseman Marek Zidlicky was a distant second on the Devils in averaging 21:38 per game.

In playing in all 82 games in 2013-14, Greene had eight goals and 24 assists for 32 points (second most in his career) and tied for second on the team with a plus-3 defensive rating.

The Trenton, Mich. native got married on July 12. Lamoriello said on July 3 that he intended to begin discussions with Greene’s camp after things settled down following the wedding.

“Obviously, with the wedding and whatnot, everything came together pretty quickly the last couple days here,” Greene said. “It was a pretty quick process. Both sides were extremely excited and happy to get it done, so that made it a fairly quick process.”

" We had a post-season conversation," Lamoriello said. "We expressed our thoughts, he expressed his and he knew that we would be working toward getting something done and after the wedding we finalized it.”

After a standout college career at Miami University of Ohio, Greene signed with the Devils as an undrafted free agent on April 4, 2006. In eight seasons with the team, he has 28 goals and 121 assists for 149 points in 477 games.

Greene and Lamoriello first discussed the possibility of signing an extension in their end of the season meeting in April. Greene said waiting to explore the unrestricted free agent market next summer, “never even entered my mind.”

“Having one more year left on my current deal, Lou and I sat down in our normal at the end of the year meeting and he just mentioned it briefly that it was something we’d be interested in and, obviously, that’s exactly what I wanted,” Greene said. “Like I said the last time I re-signed here (July 1, 2011), I came in as a Devil and I’m very fortunate to continue my career as a Devil.”

As Lamoriello noted, Greene has grown into one of the leaders on the Devils, serving as an alternate captain this past season and being voted the team’s “Unsung Hero” award by the players.

“There’s no question it was important for us have Andy long-term,” Lamoriello said. “He is the sort-of top defenseman right now if you have to look at who the top defenseman is. He carries the most minutes in each critical situation whether it’s 5-on-5, in a defensive situation or in a power-play situation and penalty killing. We have to kind of keep ice time away from him, that’s how important he is, to make sure late in the game he isn’t tired. So, that’s an indication of what we think of him.

“The other aspect is his leadership, which goes unnoticed. He’s a quiet leader. He’s respected by the players (as) evident in the postseason awards by the players, what they think of him, and the way he can handle the young defensemen. They look up to him. He knows what to say, when to day it and when he says something it means something and they never take it personal. So, having all of that knowledge, it was very important to have Andy back and also, as he mentioned, he’s a pure Devil. This is the only team he’s been with. This is the team he wanted to be with.”

Greene said he is “very excited” about the upcoming season with goaltender Cory Schneider locked up to a seven-year, $42 million contract extension and forwards Mike Cammalleri and Martin Havlat added as unrestricted free agents earlier this month. He’s also looking forward to a bright future with young defensemen Jon Merrill, Adam Larsson and Eric Gelinas all getting a chance to play in the top six in 2014-15.

“That was another reason, looking at the future and looking at our upside here,” he said. “With the three young D, obviously, I know them very well and they’re going be great D. It’s just going to be a little bit of time and they’re going to be very good defensemen. And on the offensive side with a couple of signings with Cammalleri and Havlat, hopefully it’s easy on them to come in and do their job like they’ve been doing. I’m very excited about the upcoming season with Schneids coming back with his extension too.”

Greene believes the Devils are “right there” as far as being Stanley Cup contenders.

“Obviously, with the way last year went, we weren’t far off,” he said. “The shootout record (0-13) gets thrown out there quite a bit and it’s easy to sit there and say now, ‘If we win a couple of those, we’re in the playoffs and who knows what happens?’ We’re not far off where the type of game we play gives us a chance to win every night and that’s all we can ask for. Get in the playoffs. That’s all that matters now. Like you’ve seen over the years, it doesn’t matter if it’s a one seed or an eight seed. Once you’re in, you have just as good a chance as anyone else.”

As one of the veterans on the defense – along with Bryce Salvador and Marek Zidlicky – Greene knows he is a player who is looked to for leadership.

"I want to take more of a leadership role, but at every level I’ve been I’ve kind of been looked at as that guy, a leader-type guy,” Greene said. “So, at each level it’s different too in the way you go about it, but it comes natural and you don’t try to be someone you’re not. That’s the thing I try to do. I’m not going to stand up and say something just to say something. If I feel like something needs to be said, I say it and there’s different ways in going about that, but it’s not something I try to force or try to be something different than what I am.”

Greene might have been able to command more money as an unrestricted free agent next summer, but his priority was to remain a Devil, so the deal got done pretty quickly this week. At 5-foot-11, 190 pounds, Green often flies under the radar, but the Devils clearly view him as a top defenseman.

“I have no question or we would have not made this signing for the period of time and where we put him,” Lamoriello said. “Andy has evolved (into) an all-situation player and that’s a tremendous compliment because there are very few in the league that you can say are all-situation players and can play also both left or right depending upon what’s asked of him. So, we consider him that. That’s our opinion in our organization and (with) Andy’s humbleness he would never put himself (on that level). Just the way he speaks is an indication of the way he plays: He comes and does his job day in day out, never takes a night off, never takes a practice off, plays every night, plays hard and you never see him look left or right.

“He’s always focused on what he’s doing and, to me, that’s a top defenseman.”

As Lamoriello indicated, Greene wasn’t interested in talking about himself in those terms.

“It’s not something that I really think about or focus on,” Greene said. “Whether I’m a premier defenseman or not, I just go out there and doing your job, doing whatever Pete and the coaches and Lou is asking of us and playing as a team. That’s the way we win games and lose games. I know it sounds cliché, but that’s our team. We don’t have tons of really top-end talent. We can’t rely on (individual) guys. We’ve got to rely on each other and play as a team and that’s the way we have success – playing as a team.”

***

Lamoriello has been busy this off-season locking up key pieces of the team for the future, also signing Schneider an extension on July 9. After losing some key players to unrestricted free agency in recent years – most notably Zach Parise to Minnesota in 2012 – Lamoriello seems intent on doing his best to make that doesn’t happen again.

“In every one of these situations after July 1 of a player going into his free agency (season), this is nothing inconsistent with what we’ve tried in the past and continue to try,” Lamoriello said. “If we can come to an agreement prior to him playing out his free agency, we will do that. In Andy’s case the last time (2011), we were not able to do that, but it wasn’t something we didn’t work at. In most cases, you are (successful). In some cases, you’re not. It’s understandable. (It’s) the timing of it happening, where players are playing at that given time, where they might see or not see their future and how they’re used.

“So, there’s a lot of intangibles as well as tangibles involved. We always try and do this. We just don’t publicly say who we do and who we don’t.”

***

As much as Greene is looking forward to working with the team’s young defensemen, he admitted he is going to miss Mark Fayne, his defense partner for much of the last three seasons and good friend. Fayne signed a four-year, $14 million contract with Edmonton as an unrestricted free agent on July 1.

Greene called Fayne’s departure “the business aspect of it.”

“He’s a great friend,” Greene said. “We rode to the rink every day together and played together quite a bit, but at the end of the day he has to do what he thinks is best for him. I’ll miss him as a teammate and a friend, but I wish him luck.”

About

TOM GULITTI has covered the New Jersey Devils for The Record since 2002. Prior to that, he covered the New York Rangers for four years. Gulitti joined The Record in 1998 after six years at The North Jersey Herald News. He graduated from Binghamton University in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts in Rhetoric-Literature.